Identifiability as an “Antidote”: Exploring Emotional Contagion and the Role of Anonymity in Twitter Discussions on Misinformation

Abstract

Misinformation carries both distorted facts and sophisticated emotional signals. Comparing to facts that could be labeled as true or false, we are more concerned about contaminative negative emotions transferring digitally among users. In this study, we explored an emotional contagion effect among misinformation discussion participants on Twitter. We analyzed the sentiment of 573 tweets in 192 discussion threads. Our result revealed that highly emotional tweets do not have a universal effect on the online discussions, but it affects those individuals with limited social and personal identity cues (i.e., being anonymous). We found that anonymous members of the online discussion are more susceptible to emotional contagions than those are not. We also suggest coping strategies that protect social media users' emotional well-being during the era COVID-19.